FDL News can confirm that, in a little over an hour, Keith Olbermann will announce on a conference call with reporters that he will join Current TV for a nightly television show. Bill Carter and Brian Stelter at the New York Times hinted at this last night. Former and current employees of Current were able to confirm the deal.

This is an unusual deal because Current had been foundering in the “Year 5, let’s purchase a lot of available content cheap” part of their lifespan, usually the last step before closure. Current, co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, sought to create a channel entirely out of citizen-created content. People would upload stories to their site, and they would play them out in “pods” throughout the day. Like MTV or any short-form programming channel, this got old fast, and the quality was based on what came over the transom. So they hired reporters to get their own stories; probably the most famous Current story of all time concerned Lisa Ling and Euna Lee’s filming at the Chinese/North Korean border, which led to their detention and eventual release thanks to former President Clinton. More recently, Current started buying reruns of shows like “This American Life” and movies like “Brick.” They are in 60 million homes, but typically on the digital tier.

Olbermann gives them an identity and a voice, but that’s only one hour a night. Keith himself may add an online component to his media empire, and get an equity stake in Current (which he probably deserves, since his presence will keep that network alive in the near term). Current had a production executive hierarchy that could be charitably called “dysfunctional,” so pairing that with Olbermann could become a combustible mix. And he’ll have to do a lot of work getting his fans and viewers to find the channel, let alone watch.

On the bright side, he’ll have the opportunity basically to remake an entire channel in his image. Current is probably shelling out a lot of money for Olbermann, so I don’t know if they’ll be able to add follow-on programming in the near future and create an entire lineup. But if they can, it would undoubtedly reflect Olbermann’s vision.

I don’t know if what the United States needs is another cable news channel, but it’ll certainly give Jon Stewart more material to work with.

UPDATE: Olbermann has made his announcement. He will become the “Chief News Officer” of Current, a fancier way of saying editor-in-chief, akin to the role that lead anchors play in news divisions. He will have an equity stake in Current Media. His one-hour show will air 5 nights a week. No specific word on the start date, just “later in 2011.”

In his statement, Olbermann stressed that “nothing is more vital to my concept of a free media than news produced independently of corporate interference.”

Excellent news. I was really really afraid he was just going to go back into sports. I would hate to lose his passion from the political, and governance scene.

Honestly, I never watched him too much on MSNBC because I knew i was already a permanent choir member. But I did always follow his posts at Daily Kos or watch a special comment the next day on the net, etc.

I don’t get Current on my cable provider, but I will go out of my way to find it on the net and provide as much traffic as I can to support the man and Current TV.

It would be great to just completely bypass the MSM and their self-serving perspectives and obfuscation. And yes, David Shuster would be another great addition to the line-up.

I wish Mr. Olbermann all the best with this new venture. I think it’s *great* that he’s left MSNBC, where clearly he was being more and more muzzled by the PTB and big-boss Jeff Imelt.

Maybe he can get RM to leave MSNBC, too, and come over to Current TV and go back to doing a credible job. Right now her show *stinks* and is useless, but I do know that RM has the chops to do a far better job than what’s permitted at the moment.

Presumably KO is going someplace like this to maintain his ‘visibility’ while the noncompete part of his severance pkg runs out. How long is that and how quickly will he bolt Current once he’s free to go elsewhere.

I really enjoyed Current’s show Vanguard. Great stuff. Unfortunately we switched from DirecTV to Charter Cable, which means we no longer get Current. A lack of access to the channel will be Keith’s biggest obstacle.

Off topic but I loath Valentine’s Day! A “holiday” designed purely for the retailers and to attempt to make single people feel ashamed of being single in order to make said retailers even more money next year. A pox on valentines.

Current had a production executive hierarchy that could be charitably called “dysfunctional,” so pairing that with Olbermann could become a combustible mix.

If KO has an equity position of any size (and if this entity is in trouble, he probably will), then he should have enough juice not only to drive news content, but also to contribute some vision and direction to management. One would hope that things turn out that way, in any case.

But when in a relationship it is the one day a year you can assuage yer guilt for being an asshat the rest of the year .. I too boycott V_day ..I save all my money to buy chocolate Jesus figures at Easter ..

I know, I know, but still… I send valentines to all the elder women I know, as it makes them feel loved and acknowledged and valued (which they are). It is a b.s. holiday, but sending forth loving thoughts to others is a good thing, imo. And so: Happy Valentine’s Day to you, Margaret!! And to kitteh, who I am *still laughing about* thinking about his head in the glass of water (snort, guffaw)!

Tweety become more repulsive every day .. he is as bad as O’Riley at “interruptus” .. probably because he knows more than any living human about politics .. just cause Tip let him pack his bags for him ..

I guess this is the ultimate test of Olbermann’s appeal and pull as a media star. Current is a TV backwater with little audience and, besides the initial buzz over Al Gore, has not made much of an impact in its existence. I’ll watch Olbermann, but will it be sustainable for the millions that tuned in on easy-to-find MSNBC? It;s a risk.

I watched his show for awhile but got tired of his historical mistakes .. my E-mails to him asking him to correct his perceptions of the role the Iroquois played in North American history went unnoticed so now I mock him with my sock puppet .. /g

Good! I hope KO need not compromise his constitutional rights in this endeavor as he was forced to by the corporate scum at NBC. Now he can fight with two fists rather than having one fist tied behind his back, leveraged by corporate scum!

Like a lot of stuff in the past decade, I simply got tired of KO & moved on. Don’t have strong feelings one way or another anymore. Thought he was one of the few decent anchors/opinionators during the W admin, but he couldn’t find his feet once O took office.

Here’s my fantasy: Current and AOL combine to bring a tv channel to our no pay tv for us poor folks that will air shows – maybe a week later than the cable stuff, but actually get the stuff to us – that will include a lot of spying on Congress a la C-span. Us poor folk have handmedown old computers good for reading stuff but little else – but we still have tvs. I’ve given up asking for a government station on there – seems like a lot of space going to waste, only get Amy Goodman on radio though I’m very grateful for that. But both media, ordinary tv and radio are crying for more informational input – the ‘progressive’ stations are a total joke.

Our taxes should be for what they call entitlements, infrastructure projects,a national guard to take care of emergencies, clean energy conversion, a national informational media that is not corporate run. Have government employees doing it.

Olbermann has had the reputation of misogynistic behavior throughout his career dating back to ESPN where he generally refused to meaningfully deal with fellow female employees and, when he did, was such an ass that he left them in tears such as he did Suzy Kolber. There is a very good reason Kolber is still at ESPN and Olbermann is long gone. This is not to even touch on his unbelievably bottom scraping behavior as to Hillary and Chelsea clinton. The man is very talented, but also a grade a giant asshole. If you do not believe me, ask any of his previous employers (and there are tons of them).

It’s going to be difficult to compete against the main stream media on broadcast TV from a spot on a pay TV channel. The late Air America is yet another prime example of multiple failures to compete with a progressive format, though embedded On-Air Talent at Air America blamed it on a succession of management that didn’t understand the business model.

Keith might take a look at Amy Goodman’s success with Democracy Now that is financed by Pacifica Radio. It’s difficult to argue with almost ten years of successful operation though, no one else has attempted to copy D. N. as far as I know. This is probably due to the fact that there is no visible revenue model in place to supplement operating costs.

The recent deal struck between Huffington Post and AOL, the old man of the Internet, seems to indicate two things: (1) On-Line advertising didn’t generate enough revenue to cover the cost of operating a text based service with a Progressive leaning, and (2) If AOL was the best Arianna could do in her search for a buyer, then major players are not standing in line to take advantage of this opportunity.

There’s always PBS but the last Bush Administration made sure that the Progressive PBS we use to know and love was changed into another Right-Wing propaganda machine shilling for corporations as their news programs took on the familiar look and feel of a state propaganda agency masquerading as a journalistic endeavor like the rest of the network news programs !

I watched Olbermann for a while i think in 2007 or so. He was the only one that was actually criticising the W administration. Unfortunately once obama took office he became unwatchable and his ego shown through. He came off as a pompous ass often times. Plus the people he had on were also unwatchable and i finally stopped watching him.

I doubt this will really help current at all and expect that it will be shutting down soon. In part they really need to do a reboot of it all as its probably suffering from all of the technology changes that have happened in the years since it was created.

He wasn’t even aware that Kolber had gone into the bathroom to cry. He states that if he’d known she was doing that, he would have apologized. I don’t think it’s his fault if someone else interprets his behavior, (chafing under the management at ESPN) as a personal attack, runs away and sulks. Olbermann’s mistake at ESPN was thinking it was something more than a sports channel.

And the reason she’s still at ESPN and Olbermann’s not is because she doesn’t make waves for the PTB, while Olbermann’s sense of quality does. I don’t see where mollifying the PTB is what FDL is about.

What I think will be telling is who KO’s regular guests are. I got so tired of Jonathan Alter, Richard Wolffe, and the other sycophants. Maybe he was forced to use them by MSNBC since the network was paying them to be contributors. Let’s see if Marcy, Jane, Glenzilla, Robert Kennedy, and the likes will be prime time players on KO’s new show.

I don’t think Al Gore ever tried to build a counter to Fox News. He tried to tried to do something different. Put cable TV and the internet together.

Unfortunately, it was too different. Cable TV is not interactive. Never will be. The internet is the place to do interactive. Gotta let cable TV do what it does. Be a video feed to those who wish to just sit and watch.

Current gonna have to be a little less different with Olbermann on board.

Yeah, that was only one of hundreds of stories about Olbermann at ESPN and elsewhere. If you want to defend the asshole, fine; but at least have the guts to admit what and who he is. Your head is in the sand.

Oh, and to this day, Olbermann never apologized to Suzy, so that shit does not fly.

No. Air America was an attempt by a right winger to poison the well for all progressive political programming.

The right winger started Air America with Al and Marc Meron and tried to go fold the station a few weeks after the start-up. It was supposed to big ugly national disaster that would ensure no progressive radio for a generation.

A bunch of solid progressives kept that mess from happening by flinging their wallets at the mess that right winger had created.

I’ve never seen him treat anybody poorly that didn’t deserve it, so I don’t have to admit anything of the kind. I don’t take other people’s rumormongering as truth. With my head out of the sand, I’ve seen enough of office politics to know that malice exists against people who hold higher standards. If you want to criticize him, that’s fine too, but second-hand information doesn’t fly. If Kolber had an issue with Olbermann, she should have the guts to confront him about it. He has no reason to apologize for someone else’s lack of fortitude. He has always been respectful of Rachel Maddow. He gave Alicia Stewart a chance to guest-host his show, until she made an irresponsible comment about wardrobe choices. He has made deprecating comments about himself on the air. So mischaracterizing him as narcissistic and misogynistic doesn’t fly, either.

We had current tv on direct tv and in my opinion it was a terribly juvenile show. That was 2 years ago. I understand it has gone through several producers, etc. so it may be better now although many cable companies do not carry it. I would much rather have Link tv where on can see Democracy Now, Thom Hartmann, Al Jazerra, etc. Current tv was purchased from News World International which is Canadian and had some excellent documentaries. To me loosing New world was a loss and current tv a greater loss.